As nobody has brought up this old thread because of my recent criticisms of her, I thought I would requote my refutation of Sarva’s parody of my experiences in India (Sarva by the way was a dishonest Hindu, who actually ganged up against me with Asuri, a member who was banned for his racist remarks against Hindu. At that time time Sarva was against Asuri, but later when he became enemies with me, he and Asuri became best friends and would regularly gang up on me - Sarva only knew how to insult and nothing else, when David enforced the no personal attacks rule and deleted Sarva’s posts - Sarva stopped posting altogether on the forum)
[QUOTE=Surya Deva;70597]Nope, it’s got nothing to do with my ego. Your adhominem is not going to change the fact that millions of Hindu youth today are turned off from Hinduism because of the kind of experiences I recount. Notice how in your parody of my experiences you omit the most negative ones:
The woman acting like Durga herself had entered her at the Devi pooja festival with her baby. A very common sight to be seen at any Hindu religious festival. Stampedes are also very common because of such neurotic behaviour.
The Yoga guru who molested his students in the ashram.
The Krishna monk who tried to steal my music player from the back of my player while I was prostating.
The Sadhus at the Krishna Bhakti ashram that were exploiting the naive Australian seeker and were always high on drugs.
The American Yogi who was persecuted by the Vedanta monks in Utterkashi. Including the nasty gossiping they did about other monks.
The sinister Sadhu that was trying to get me to a remote place with him.
The Vedic scholar who was trying to justify everything within Hinduism, including unscientific statements to be scientific facts: Like the Moon being further away from the Earth than the sun or how we must offer water to the sun, otherwise it will stop burning! This kind of bad science is peddled by many Puranic Hindus, and is just as embarrassing as Christian flat earthers.
The very fact that you would choose to simply brush this under the carpet reveals you are insecure about these facts of Hinduism today. You are thus not somebody who is capable of self-criticism of his religion. You have said a lot of negative stuff about Abrahamic religions both on Yoga forums and HDF, but you cannot take it when the critical eye falls on your religion. Clown.
Now let us look at your trivialization of the real issues at hand in the experiences you did decide to cover:
No, the Sadhu told me not to renounce the world. Reunication is a mental act(Krishna says this in the Gita too) He told me to stop eating, to go on the street and beg and to serve him like a slave just that I could learn some Yoga from him. It is obvious that to learn Yoga one does not have to do any of this, this is why it is a dead tradition. I could learn exactly what he was going to teach me, anywhere else, without going through all this pointless garbage. He is effectively encouraging me to become poor, beg on the street and endanger my well being. Only an idiot thinks this is healthy.
No, he told me that I could not be a proper Hindu unless I spoke Hindi, wore Indian clothes and practiced Indian forms and enter the caste system and practice all ordained duties and rituals for my caste and got married as per the Hindu rules that somebody at the age of 31 has to get married. This immediately excludes anybody who is non Indian, who does not speak Hindu, who wears jeans, shirts and trousers. We know that following these endless set of rules is definitely not a prerequisite to be a Hindu, thus this person definition of being hinges on nothing more blind adherence to an outdated set of rules.
In modern society nobody is obliged to get married, let alone married by a certain age.
Nope, I was told my knowledge of Vedanta was not valid simply because I had learned it by myself(not through an authorized Guru) and through English translations. They were not even prepared to listen to what I already knew about Vedanta. This excludes even Vedanta scholars around the world who have not learned it in from Gurus or in Sanskrit, and yet their knowledge is probably more than a match for these traditionalists. Again the main concern here is blind adherence to tradition, rather than being open to allowing Vedanta to be taught through non traditional means.
A Hindu Vedanta swami that I actually respected, told me how he tried to introduce new things to the tradition by introducing readings of the Yoga Vasistha, but faced a lot of intolerance. He was also open to accommodating the American yogi, but the Vedanta monks were intolerant to him. The monks at his place actively persecuted him, gosspied nastily about him, tried to get him kicked out of India, even sent him hate messages and threats.
Sarva you are a clown. You can’t actually deal with the fact that Hinduism is rife with garbage like I just pointed out and even try to rationalize it by appealing to fallacious arguments of tradition. I am actually in good company, my criticisms of Hindu pointless ritualism and blind adherence to tradition has been voiced by all major Hindu reformers from the great Buddha to Guru Nanak to Swami Dayananda Saraswati. I am not at all afraid of speaking my mind. You can try and belittle me all you want, the truth is you are belittling only yourself by clearly betraying your insecurities.[/QUOTE]
